


All We Have Left

by orphan_account



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Female Character, Canon Typical Violence, Character Study, F/M, Gentle Negan (Walking Dead), Jadis - Freeform, Jadis is a BAMF, M/M, Negan (Walking Dead) Swears, Negan (Walking Dead) is an automatic warning, Negan Being Negan (Walking Dead), Non Explicit Sex, POV Negan, Platonic Sex, Simon is an asshole, bisexual negan, the walking dead - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 14:10:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16536065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A weird (but not entirely unpleasant) day between Negan and Jadis





	All We Have Left

**Author's Note:**

> Missing scenes from when Jadis kidnaps and holds Negan prisoner at the junkyard during 8.14

“What the shit” Negan had whispered to himself when he’d woken up. He was alone, as far as he could tell, in some dark room tied to a stretcher. Completely fucking immobile. His shirt, sticky down the front with someone’s blood. Whether it’s from a walker or his own isn’t immediately clear. His hands are bound to his sides and there’s no way to feel for wounds. “Fuck” he curses, louder this time.

 

 

The day had started off so well. A fineass plan to intimidate the hilltop residents and get Simon’s men back. Rick had derailed that version of events pretty damn quickly. The man had been dead set on crashing Negan’s car in some serious post apocalyptic road rage. They’d sparred in an abandoned warehouse and Negan had done some soul searching and offered Rick a deal. It was a damn good deal and he would have kept his word. Rick the prick was stubborn as hell and he’d gone off the deep end and tried to burn Lucille anyways. Dumbass.

 

For a couple minutes as they brawled he wondered if he actually would bite the bullet this time. It wouldn’t have been the worst way to go, Ricks hands wrapped around his neck. Blue eyes wild and unhinged sweat dripping off the edges of those pretty brown curls. He’d still been pleasantly surprised finding the exit by being hurled through it.

 

Then he’d hauled ass out of there- so focused on putting distance between him and Rick that he’d been wholly caught off guard when the tall garbage woman had pistol whipped him in the face and took him to wherever the hell he was now.

 

 

She’d looked pretty damn pissy before knocking him out. Negan thought back to his conversation with Rick, playing cat and mouse in the warehouse basement. Rick had said something about the garbage people. About him wiping the community off the map which Negan knew he’d never fucking authorized. People were a resource and sure the garbage people were backstabbing triple crossers but their policy was as simple as their clipped sentences.

 

 

“We take, don’t bother” Tamiel had said when the saviors had made their original deal. The scavengers helped whoever would best serve their community. Hadn’t seemed overly concerned with the morality of betraying their Alexandrian allies during that first battle. Whatever Rick had said to get them to join him again at what he thought would be the grateful surrender of the saviors must have been worth more in survival. Or maybe he’d grown a pair and threatened them. Either way Negan had been reasonable with the punishment he’d told Simon to dole out. Simon. That sick motherfucker and his pornstache were gonna have a whole lot of explaining to do if- no when he got himself out of this mess.

 

 

A pair of doors were slowly pulled open illuminating what Negan could now see was a storage crate of some sort. Jadis towered above him the look on her face pure contempt. She reached down and snatched a bundle of chains at the bottom of the stretcher and begins to wheel Negan into the open.

 

 

“What the shit!” He protests met only with her silence. “No really, just tell me what the shit!” He calls to no avail. Lucille is slung over one of Jadis’ flannel clad shoulders. She carries her annoyingly well he notices. Jadis pulls Negan roughly into the clear area between a shit ton of trash piles and busies herself filling a wheelbarrow with salt and pieces of kindling.

 

 

“We having a barbecue or something?” Negan jokes trying to pick up his head to get a better look at his surroundings. Jadis shoots him a withering glare and tosses Lucille haphazardly on top of the wood. He pales. What the hell was up with everyone trying to burn his girl today. Jesus

 

 

Negan stares at the mid morning sky and tries not to panic. Then he sucks in a deep breath and gets a lot more than he anticipated. The scent of rancid meat permeates the air and now that he’d caught wind he couldn’t stop smelling it.

 

 

“Damn Jadis does your junkyard always smell like dogshit?” Negan asks desperately trying to take her attention away from the fire.

 

 

She wheels around suddenly hurt flashing in her red rimmed eyes.

 

 

“No that’s just the smell that you get when you combine the remains of every single other scavenger man woman and child with a few days of Virginia sun.” She snaps. It’s the most Negan has heard her talk at once since he’d met her.

 

 

“I herded them into a trash grinder. Banged on the metal in front of it and sat back and watched them try to get at me. Watched them fall mindlessly. Reaching for me until they were only heads. Gnashing their teeth at me even then. They are nothing but piles upon piles of raw meat at the end of a conveyor now.” She finishes emotionlessly and returns to her fire.

 

 

“Jadis hold on just wait a second. People are resources I don't throw resources like that away. I got a lot of confidence that most people can be put on the right path. My path. I wouldn't have killed all your people. No. That was the work of someone not following the program. But this? This is my mistake. I'll own this. I took a chance on someone, thought I was doing the right thing, and all I did was punch myself in the dick. I am sorry for this. I really am. I’m sorry that you lost all you had. But I know, in some way, I can help get it back, that we-” Jadis screams in anguish and raises Lucille bringing her down to an inch above his face. Her message is clear and Negan hasn’t lost his knack for self preservation. He shuts up real quick.

 

Her watch beeps and she stalks off disappearing behind the stacks of trash. The second she is out of sight Negan begins thrashing madly slowly angling himself towards a blue suede suitcase she left behind. He manages to get one arm free so he can pull the suitcase onto its side. The first thing he sees are clothes. Jadis’ personals intermingled with a few pairs of pants and a grey shirt.

 

“Dammit! Come on...” he says to himself and continues rooting deeper into the bag pulling free a (hopefully loaded) handgun and an unlit flare that’s laying innocently next to a blue lighter. Perfect. As Negan pulls his hand out of the bag leaving most of its content hanging out the side his hand catches on a dirty ziplock baggie. There’s snapshots inside. Polaroids and a few photo prints maybe about twelve in all.

 

He pours the bag on the ground next to the stretcher and sifts through the photos. The polaroids are junkyard shots. Jadis next to the older man he’d seen during the deal negotiations the two of them standing on top of a trash heap looking down on a crowd gathered below. There’s one in the middle of Tamiel.

 

The blond scavenger is naked stretched out on a clean white pallet bed. (Negan doesn’t know where in the hell they keep something like that in the middle of a junkyard but he’d love to see it right about now) It’s not a pornographic shot but it still feels intimate. Definitely something he knows he has no business looking at. The glint in her eyes and the smile for the person behind the camera make him wonder whether she was Jadis’ lover. The protective nature of Tamiels glare whenever he had negotiated with the scavengers made a lot more sense in the context of these photos.

 

 

He can’t say he doesn’t feel for her looking at these snapshots. He doesn’t want to imagine how it must have been to lead people into a motherfucking meat grinder but he’s got a pretty good imagination when it comes to fantasies and he sure as hell wishes he could turn that shit off when it comes to gory nightmares.

 

He’s slipped back into his cocky smile by the time Jadis gets back. Chastises her for leaving him with a bag full of guns and threatens to burn her photographs. Holds them right next to the flare and that hurts her badly he can fucking tell. Jadis might think she’s got a nice poker face when it comes to everyone else. Negan prides himself on being able to read people like a book. And she is no exception.

 

“Leave those pictures alone!” She breaks down already half crying 

 

“Figured they meant something to you.  
Especially considering this is it, right? I mean, it's not like you can just pop around the corner and order yourself some prints.So I'm gonna ask you one more time. What the shit? I mean, this THISis how you kill people? With that thing? Slowly? No. People are a resource.” He reasons calmly

 

“Move the flare away Please. They're all I have left. They're all this place has left.You took my world, everything. You took it all away.” She’s broken. Maybe the same type of broken as he is. He can feel the facade slipping away just a bit and suddenly he cant stop himself from letting out a bit of his anguish to this random woman in a junkyard.

 

“My wife's name was Lucille. She got me through.I didn't give her shit, and she got me through. Just life. Regular life. The bat. The bat got me through this.So I named it after her. That's it. Nothing more to do with her than that.  
But it is the last little piece of her that I got left. Sort of like these snaps for you, huh?” Negan pauses for a second to look at Jadis. Trying gauge how much he’s swaying her.

 

Before he spills even more of his metaphorical guts Jadis watch alarms goes off. He can hear the heavy blades of a helicopter He can see a god damn CHOPPER hovering over the junkyard.

 

 

Jadis is panicked jumps into action and pushes a walker that looks as if it’s been melded to a cart straight at him. Negan would’ve been impressed if he hadn’t been about to piss himself. He pops off a couple shots from the gun (that apparently is fucking loaded! First break he’s had all day) She screams and launches herself at the flare and they both watch it roll into the water. Her eyes darken and he’s not sure why. All he knows he sure as shit has no goddamn leverage now.

 

“What the shit?” He says to himself not even half trying to be heard. He hasn’t seen anything like this since the start. A couple military choppers must’ve flown overhead in the first couple months but it’s been two years since he’s heard anything more exciting than the odd semi truck on the ruined overpass. Jadis bolts out of view and sprints back with another lit flare.

 

 

“No! No! No! I'm here! I'm here! I'm here! I'm here.” Jadis screams at a volume he didn’t know she had in her until her voice is so hoarse she can’t anymore. It doesn’t make a difference. The chopper flies upwards and circles the junkyard as if to taunt her before flying off. If she looked destroyed before it is nothing compared to how the junkyard woman looks now. She takes brisk strides over to the wheelbarrow and he knows what her endgame.

 

 

“No, don't! Don't! I-I didn't burn your pictures. I didn't do it.I wouldn't. That is all I have left of her. You burn her, and all you have is ashes.” Negan would like to believe he wouldn’t have burned her shit but if that’s what it came to he couldn’t be sure. The only thing he had left was bullshit and If bullshit kept Lucille from going up in a plume of smoke he’d do the best he could.

 

“I get to hurt you” Jadis explains as if it wasn’t glaringly obvious.”

 

I didn't do it. I can settle it. I swear on my sack, I will. I can settle it. Okay? Okay?” He thinks it’s over. He braces himself for the flames but she tosses the flare to the floor and drops to her knees sobbing. Tears cloud his own vision and they stay that way for a while. Until she collects herself and stands.

 

 

Negan can’t move his arms enough to cover his own tear tracks but he doesn’t mind the vulnerability in the moment. He cries mostly for Lucille. The close call with the bat and the loss of his wife made fresh by spilling his story like some high school girl. But he cries a little for what she’s lost too. Negan has respect for leaders. Jadis did what she had to keep her people alive and she lost them all anyways. God damn Simon. 

 

 

Jadis is quiet again as she unties the ropes and extends a slender hand to help him up. She motions in a direction past the junk piles and he follows her to a cargo holder. Inside is a clean and bright wooden interior and the pallet he’d seen in some of her polaroids. It would do no good to wonder why (or how) she’s spent her time refurbishing a cargo holder. He just sits on the clean wooden floor and waits for her to hand him his jacket. He starts pulls it on over the bloodstained white shirt and she watches him eagle eyed.

 

 

“See something you like?” He teases lightly adjusting the fit of the jacket until it hangs in just the way he wants. She raises an eyebrow and wipes the tears off her cheeks.

 

 

“Do you want to lay with me?” She questions sitting herself lightly on the pallet. Straight to the point and as clipped as she’s been in every past encounter before whatever the anomaly of today was. He’s thoroughly shocked but entirely up for it if she wants to have a go.

 

 

“I assume you don’t mean the sleeping kind right? DAMN.. I wouldn’t have pegged you as the propositioning sort but my curiosity is entirely piqued!” he responds making his way over to sit with her. The bed creaks a little with his weight added but she doesn’t move. 

 

The scavenger shrugs. “We’re both ruined. I ground my lovers and my only friends into raw meat. You’re in love with a baseball bat. I have nothing better to do.”

 

 

Negan doesn’t miss how she puts a plural on her lovers. He has five willing wives back at the sanctuary but loves none of them. Somehow he knows whatever she had with Tamiel and Orion wasn’t about sex at all.

 

 

While they kiss and begin to go further in the dim light of Jadis’ cargo holder he wonders if she thinks of Tamiel and Orion or if she tries to lose herself in the heat of their carnal moment like he does. When they are finished they lie panting. She’s cut a skylight in the top of the cargo holder and he can see the world begin to get darker. He strokes her hair until she roughly pushes his hands away.

 

 

“I truly am sorry for this shit Jadis. I will make Simon pay. I didn’t just say it so you would let me up. He’s the closest thing I’ve got to a friend at the sanctuary but that motherfucker has been off the rails for a long time.” He admits softly She turns and grips his shoulder tightly.

 

 

“Thank you.”

 

 

“You’re very fucking welcome.” He says back jovially “Jesus if only things had ended this way with Rick earlier.” He laughs and waits for her reaction

 

 

“You want Rick as well?” Jadis looks at him and smirks “Seems like no one can resist those baby blues.”

 

Negan snorts and pulls his pants back on. “Maybe I got a touch of masochism in me. Dumbass ran me off the road earlier” he confesses. Jadis sits up on the pallet and hands him his shirt. Lucille is leaned against the exit door. Negan sits up and pulls jadis to her feet and the two walk silently together to where Jadis left her photos.

 

 

He stands above her and takes a few practice swings with Lucille as she lovingly strokes the picture of Tamiel.

 

 

Negan pries a bit about the helicopter but one look from Jadis confirms it’s a curiosity he’ll have to live with. He offers her a place with him at the sanctuary. Knowing she’ll decline wondering how it would be if she accepted anyways. Negan knows it was a one time thing. That if he keeps his promise and swings by to visit the junkyard she’ll pretend the exchange on her pallet never took place. It is interesting how similar they are. 

 

 

She gifts him a working car and trusts him to go out on her revenge mission. It’s not really his style but who is he to complain. He drives off whistling. Speeds down the poorly lit evening road and ponders on what a fucking weird day it’s been.

**Author's Note:**

> I think season eight Jadis and season eight Negan are such similar characters in that they both build a facade to survive. (Jadis’ clipped tone and Negans cocky tyranny bullshit) I wish we had seen more of their dynamic before Anne’s exit because I found 8.14 to be one of the more engaging episodes of season eight. Comments or kudos are always appreciated :))


End file.
